


all the bright sides

by Speechwriter (batmansymbol)



Category: Noteworthy - Riley Redgate
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Post-Canon, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:15:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24725140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batmansymbol/pseuds/Speechwriter
Summary: She says “Knock knock” at the same time that she knocks. Isaac’s already smiling as he spins around in his rolling chair.“Who’s there?” he says. “Oh my God. Who are you? Unrecognizable.”Jordan laughs. It’s been a week since tour and she looks exactly the same, obviously, tall and square-shouldered and unmovable—but always a little furtive, too, with her hands sunk deep in her pockets, like she’s not sure that she’s supposed to be here. Like she’s still thinking it over.
Relationships: Jordan Sun/Isaac Nakahara
Comments: 7
Kudos: 10





	all the bright sides

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pidanka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pidanka/gifts), [TheLastKnownSurvivor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLastKnownSurvivor/gifts).



_Jordan (3:14 p.m.): so. i was trapped between babies._

_Isaac (3:14 p.m.): You were what???_

_Jordan (3:17 p.m.): on the plane there was a baby directly next to me_

_Jordan (3:17 p.m.): and then another one in the row behind me_

_Jordan (3:18 p.m.): and i think they must have like coordinated in baby language or something_

_Jordan (3:18 p.m.): because there were maybe, maaaaybe, fourteen seconds of silence the whole flight_

_Isaac (3:18 p.m.): SO what you’re saying is you’re nearly here? :)_

_Jordan (3:21 p.m.): haha._

_Jordan (3:22 p.m.): yes._

_Jordan (3:24 p.m.): you’re cute, you know that?_

_Isaac (3:24 p.m.): I DO know that. yes. Thanks for feeding into my confirmation bias._

_Jordan (3:25 p.m.): i live to confirm bias_

_Jordan (3:25 p.m.): see you in 15._

* * *

She says “Knock knock” at the same time that she knocks. Isaac’s already smiling as he spins around in his rolling chair.

“Who’s there?” he says. “Oh my God. Who are you? Unrecognizable.”

Jordan laughs. It’s been a week since tour and she looks exactly the same, obviously, tall and square-shouldered and unmovable—but always a little furtive, too, with her hands sunk deep in her pockets, like she’s not sure that she’s supposed to be here. Like she’s still thinking it over.

But her suitcase is in the threshold, and Isaac loves that. He loves that she didn’t even go to Burgess to drop off her things before coming to see him. He wants to say yes, yes, yes, you’re supposed to be here, I’m so glad you’re still here.

He’s just smiling at her, though, because saying something like that would be so much, so fast. The silence is actually a little bit awkward. They’ve been texting nonstop since tour, and they FaceTimed two days ago, and the night that she called him to tell him she was coming back to Kensington for the spring semester, his final semester, they talked until 3 a.m.

Maybe that’s why it’s awkward, Isaac thinks. Because their brains have been through all this space together and their bodies haven’t caught up in the physical world. Maybe there’s something sort of cosmic about the whole thing.

“Babies,” he offers, by way of starting conversation. “On planes. Sorry about those.”

“Oh, were they yours?”

Isaac laughs, spinning a full 360 in his chair. “Yeah. I scattered like nine of them throughout the plane. My mistake. I’ll try and find a better daycare next time. Or—yeah.”

When the chair spins to a stop, Jordan is grinning. It’s that steady grin, the one that makes Isaac feel steadier, too, like her presence roots him to something. Ever since he was little, Isaac’s been called an attention-seeker, and that’s a true statement, obviously, but the way Jordan pays attention—that’s the kind he was seeking the whole time, without even knowing it. It’s like she’s twice as _there_ as everybody else. She considers all the weird flippant bullshit he allows to tumble out of his mouth, and she takes it in stride, acknowledges it, enjoys it, never seems bemused or thrown by it.

Jordan just sees what he does, and who he is, and she gets it. That’s all. And Isaac feels this rush of happiness that she’s here, and that they have this whole semester.

“Hey, so,” he says, “I missed the shit out of you even though we were in contact all the time.”

Her smile sweetens, softens, and she pushes back her short hair. “I missed you too.” She leans back out of the door to glance both ways down the hall, then crosses the room. Isaac is half out of the seat when she kisses him. She kisses him up out of the chair, and he touches her forearms, her shoulders, the sides of her neck.

For someone who can be equal parts goofy and stubborn in conversation, she always seems hesitant and serious when they kiss. She’s earnest about it, almost self-conscious, her breath always a little shaky when she draws it in through her nose. Isaac wants her to feel safe, he wants her to be thoughtless with him. She makes him want to keep being there, right where he is, to stand still. So he does, and he realizes he feels it, too. Safe.

* * *

_Trav (7:15 p.m.): Welcome back, lady and gentlemen._

_Jon Cox (7:17 p.m.): groan bc this is obviously going to be a singing related text and not a fun how was everyones break text_

_Trav (7:29 p.m.): How was everyone’s break?_

_Isaac (7:30 p.m.): wow. those timestamps are the fucking funniest thing_

_Trav (7:30 p.m.): Why?_

_Isaac (7:31 p.m.): oh no reason_

_Isaac (7:32 p.m.): just that you always text back right away… so… I’m picturing you sitting there in agony for TWELVE MINUTES, trying to decide whether you wanted to prove Jon Cox wrong more than you wanted to say something about a cappella_

_Isaac (7:35 p.m.): am I wrong???_

_Isaac (7:49 p.m.): AM I WRONG TRAVELER ATWOOD_

_Nihal (7:55 p.m.): I think this dignified silence is as close to a “your statement was uncomfortably accurate” as you’re going to get._

_Jordan (7:50 p.m.): lmao_

* * *

The thing about being back at Kensington, Jordan thinks, is that it doesn’t feel like a dream anymore. But that’s not disillusionment or disappointment. It’s a blessing, because when you know you’re in a dream, you’re always aware of the possibility of waking up.

This is her reality. This is the place she belongs.

It’s not like all her problems dissolved when the financial aid policy changed—it’s like something has calcified beneath her feet, making her more equal to the load. She’s not always waiting for the other shoe to drop; she’s letting herself color between the lines. She and Anabel Jennings and Lydia Humphreys study Greek tragedies together in the Burgess common room, making jokes about the Greek gods’ disastrous sex lives. They have a group text that’s labeled ‘Drama Queens.’

For the first month or two of the spring semester, she’s a subject of fascination around Kensington. She’s _that girl_ who infiltrated the Sharpshooters, and who, by some miracle, not only got to stay, but continues to be more and more tight-knit with the seven other Sharps. When she walks around with members of the group, with Jon Cox and Mama’s arms slung over her shoulders and one of them furiously mussing her hair like she’s their little brother, people do double-takes, grin after her in disbelief, whisper to their friends. Whenever she gets assigned a class project with someone she doesn’t know, they always start the conversation with some variant of,

“Okay, I’m sorry, but I’ve wanted to ask forever about this _disguise_ thing from last fall?”

Jordan’s awkward about it the first few times, obviously, because how is there a non-awkward way to discuss this, exactly. But it gets easier. She loosens up into it, the same way she feels she’s loosened up into her whole life, her whole self.

She keeps the short hair. She keeps the rough laugh. She keeps the desire to live without apology, and the desire to meet things head-on. And she knows these are things she acquired from living as a boy, but they’ve lost their masculine charge to her, they feel outside category. She’s always felt essentially outside category, anyway, hovering somewhere around the edges of being Chinese and being American and bristling against the rigid guidelines of feminine expectation.

She expected the Sharps to act differently, and they do—except for Trav, obviously, who treats her with exactly the same expectation of high achievement as ever. Sometimes she feels like Jon Cox and Mama have decided to adopt her, which is weird, since they’re all juniors. But she’s grateful for it, too: the first couple weeks back, some of the Minuets decide it would be fun to follow her through campus, catcalling her, and with Jon Cox and Mama on either side of her, yelling insults back at the Minuets, she gets to walk along unfazed, feeling the small invigoration of rivalry instead of embarrassment. Because that’s the thing about opposition. It also shows you where you belong.

Erik and Marcus have both become hilariously shy around her, which isn’t something she ever expected from Erik, but he doesn’t seem to be able to showboat and brag the same way to a girl, for whatever reason. Marcus is actually so polite that she has to tell him to fucking relax every so often.

And her friendship with Nihal is a cornerstone. It feels so open and easy that sometimes it feels like it can’t be real—the feeling she associates with it is luck, or rediscovery. She tries to get at this once, when they’re hanging out in his studio space: “We were definitely siblings in a past life, right?”

“I’m open to this idea,” he muses with that light detachment, picking between brushes. “Where and when?”

“Seventeenth century,” Jordan says. “I’m going to selfishly say the coast of China.”

“Perfect. I like the ocean,” Nihal says, nodding, flicking his brush over the petal of a peony. “And I think we were raised in a family of shipping magnates, but they had a tragic fall from grace, and then our parents died of a plague, and we had to rebuild our lives through our own unappreciated ingenuity.”

“ _Your_ unappreciated ingenuity,” Jordan corrects. “Because you’re the reclusive-genius younger brother, and I’m the, like, the scrappy-negotiator big sister who has to bully disreputable loan sharks into giving us money to survive.”

Nihal laughs. “Okay. We’re really giving ourselves a grim situation here.”

“Yeah, but everything turns out fine, and eventually we wound up on a small commune with our friends and loved ones.”

Nihal gives her a knowing smile. “A commune that has no likeness to Kensington at all, obviously.”

“None. Zero.” Jordan checks her watch. “Want to head over?”

“Um. In a minute.” Nihal’s eyes have strayed across the studio to another easel. There’s a boy there with long auburn hair who’s working on a neon collage.

“ _Oh,”_ Jordan whispers. “Is that him? Is that Paul?”

“Hush,” Nihal says, but his cheeks have definitely darkened, and Jordan prods him with her elbow as she passes, grinning widely.

“You have to actually talk to him,” she whispers as she passes.

“No promises,” Nihal mumbles back.

But Jordan’s glad, when she gets to the Nest, that Nihal hung back, because Isaac’s the only one there. He’s lying back on the piano bench, staring at the ceiling, his phone on his chest, but when she walks in, he hops up.

“Hey,” she says, leaning up to kiss him. “Why were you staring at the ceiling? Was—” She breaks off and takes a step back. He’s wearing a wide, nervous smile.

“College?” she says, her heart suddenly beating hard. “Which one? Columbia?”

“Columbia.” Isaac laughs. “It’s—I got in.”

The noise that comes out of Jordan isn’t quite a yell or a scream or an exclamation. She practically tackles him back into the sofa, hugging him so hard that his laughter sounds throatier than usual, and that’s why, when the door opens, they’re wrapped up in each other.

“Wow, get a room,” Jon Cox complains.

“Technically, this is a room,” Mama points out.

Jordan, not feeling embarrassed at all—this happens every couple weeks—breaks out of Isaac’s arms and all but shouts, “He got into Columbia!”

And Jon Cox drops his performance of disgust, and Mama throws his arms wide, his mouth open in delight, and then they’re both grabbing Isaac off the sofa and clapping him on the arms and shoulders and back while Isaac laughs, looking genuinely disbelieving.

The next twenty minutes are a haze of congratulation and celebration. Even Trav lets them delay the beginning of practice for eight whole minutes before insisting that they get down to singing, which, for him, is the equivalent of a six-week vacation.

As they stand in their circle and flip through their sheet music, though, Jordan finds herself leaning a bit more closely to Isaac than usual. She wants to hear his voice. She wants him to glance at her, and he does, every few minutes. He’s glowing.

Maybe this semester _was_ like a dream, she thinks, with a sudden pang. She looks around at all of them, Nihal tapping his foot steadily, Trav conducting and pausing to correct. She tries to imagine the group without Trav and Isaac at the helm and it’s like the feeling of being in an unfamiliar place, looking around, and realizing you’re a little bit lost. Soon she and Jon Cox and Mama are going to be the seniors steering the ship. She’s still not sure she knows the way.

But before she can get too deep into the feeling, Isaac’s hand slips into hers.

She looks up at him, surprised, and her uncertainties fade. He squeezes her hand. Reassurance seems to flow up from his touch.

They promised honesty, full disclosure, and for three months they’ve given that to each other. She knows that later they’re going to talk about everything, and she’s going to admit that beneath her excitement for him, she’s nervous about being apart for a whole year.

She doesn’t know what he’ll say in response. Maybe something to make her laugh. Maybe something that’s a bit avoidant or skittish, because at heart Isaac is still the boy who skates lightly through the world, rather than diving so deeply into things he upsets himself.

But he’s squeezing her hand, and they’re here together.

That’s it. That’s the way forward.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for Pidanka and TheLastKnownSurvivor :)


End file.
